Aviation is one of the most critical infrastructures of the 21st century. Even comparably short interruptions can cause economic damage summing up to the Billion-Euro range. As evident from the past, aviation shows certain vulnerability with regard to natural hazards. The proposal EUNADICS-AV addresses airborne hazards (environmental emergency scenarios), including volcano eruptions, nuclear accidents and emergencies and other scenarios where aerosols and certain trace gases are injected into the atmosphere. Such events are considered rare, but may have an extremely high impact, as demonstrated during the European Volcanic Ash Crisis in 2010. Before the 1990s, insufficient monitoring as well as limited data analysis capabilities made it difficult to react to and to prepare for certain rare, high-impact events. Meanwhile, there are many data available during crisis situations, and the data analysis technology has improved significantly. However, there is still a significant gap in the Europe-wide availability of real time hazard measurement and monitoring information for airborne hazards describing “what, where, how much” in 3 dimensions, combined with a near-real-time European data analysis and assimilation system. The main objective of EUNADICS-AV is to close this gap in data and information availability, enabling all stakeholders in the aviation system to obtain fast, coherent and consistent information. This would allow a seamless response on a European scale, including ATM, ATC, airline flight dispatching and individual flight planning. In the SESAR 2020 Programme Execution Framework, EUNADICS-AV is a SESAR Enabling project (project delivering SESAR Technological Solutions). The project aims at passing a SESAR maturity level V2, which includes respective service validation activities, including validation exercises. Work will be also done to prepare a full V3 validation.

The PNOWWA project will produce methods for the probabilistic short-term forecasting of winter weather and enable the assessment of the uncertainty in the ground part of 4D trajectories. 4D trajectory management is a necessary concept to meet future growth in air traffic; probabilistic forecasts will be used in ATM applications to support operational planning in surface management and ATM decision making, thereby increasing airport capacity, shortening delays and promoting safety. PNOWWA will demonstrate very short-term (0-3h, "nowcast") probabilistic winter weather forecasts in 15min time resolution based on an extrapolation of movement of weather radar echoes and improve predictability of changes in snowfall intensity caused by underlying terrain (such as mountains and seas). Research demonstrations are conducted both offline and online at the Operative User Environment (OUE) site representing influence of the underlying terrain to forecast accuracy. An extensive user consultation will analyze needs to ensure products are suitable to be integrated in various applications on the ATM side. The adjustment to user needs will cover the most relevant parameters (visibility, intensity and snow depth) and operationally important thresholds of the selected parameters (e.g. heavy snowfall). The PNOWWA project has linkages to completed work in ongoing EU SESAR1 program, where FMI developed Step 1 (Time Based Operations) winter weather solutions based on deterministic forecasts to local OUE. The initial concept of short-range snowfall forecasts improvement with usage of weather radar has been validated in that context, and the second phase solutions (Step 2: Trajectory-based Operations) will be developed in EU SESAR 2020 program. The proposed PNOWWA project will develop the methods for deducing probability forecasts of winter weather required by SESAR 2020. PNOWWA project will also deliver a roadmap towards implementation with connection points in future SESAR projects.

PJ.05-W2 Digital technologies for Tower - SESAR-IR-VLD-WAVE2-05-2019 deals with two main technical work packages: WP2: "Multiple Remote Tower and Remote Tower centre" and WP3: "HMI Interaction modes for Airport Tower". 14 SESAR members (in sum 31 legal beneficiaries) showed interest in this project. For WP2 cost-effectiveness is the principal key performance area (KPA). It proposes the development of a remotely provided aerodrome air traffic service by a "multiple" and/or "center" setting. Those settings help to combine ATS services from various aerodromes in a centralized control room independent on airport location in order to make use of the valuable resource ATS provider more efficiently. In the end, the passengers will benefit from by a better passenger comfort in terms of shorter travel times and better point to point connections. PJ.05-W2 will bring the multiple/center concept to such a matured level ready for industrialization. PJ.05-W2 WP3 aims to validate, in different Airport operating environments, innovative HMI modes and associated technologies. Those solutions are expected to positively contribute to the Safety and HP KPAs with reduced Controllers’ head down time and workload, as well as increased situation awareness and controllers' productivity. The PJ05-W2 DTT attracted plenty of European organisations to participate: ANSPs, industries, R&D and airport stakeholder intends to provide their specific competences to broaden the operational needs and technological expertises. The PJ.05-W2 variety of partners and validation activities will help to adequately reflect the variety of operational needs and technical solutions which in the end of the project will consolidate into a harmonized and widely accepted SESAR2020 PJ05 solution. The complete work is structured in a very collaborative way throughout all work packages and will ensure the transfer of knowledge and know-how between all participants and external to SESAR2020 projects.

Single European Sky – the vision is clearly described in the ATM Masterplan. Reaching the goals for the European Airspace is only possible with focused technical developments on European level. The air traffic controller is the main player in the traffic management at tactical level. This project aims at providing the air traffic controller with more automated tools, thus freeing capacity for situations where human intervention is crucial. This provides even safer service for an increasing amount of traffic and with lower costs, as required by airspace users. This project is a part of the SESAR programme and addresses separation management. It will not only improve current conflict detection tools, but also develop new tools aiding the air traffic controller with resolution advisory and monitoring of flight trajectory. The project also addresses new ways of working together. Air traffic controllers traditionally work in pairs and in specific airspace. Could we change this to multi-planner setup, sector less airspace and seamless cross-border operations? Our project will ensure the research is developed to a stage where it can be used in operational air traffic management systems in Europe. This ensures that anyone can fly safer, cheaper and quicker in Europe in 10 years. Another really important issue is the integration of “Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems” – drones. Drones are new to European Air Traffic Management, and it is urgent to address concepts and technological developments needed to handle this kind of traffic safely. The companies involved in this project are the only ones that can deliver this kind of result. Not on their own – but as the unique cooperation between air navigation service providers and air and ground industry. The capabilities to provide sustainable results usable throughout Europe by fast-time, real-time simulations and live trials ensures that developed prototypes are working in the context of future traffic and ATM systems.

The need for European airports to become more operationally efficient is fundamental as Airport Council International forecasts that passenger numbers across the continent will rise an average of 3.3% per annum to reach 3.9 billion by 2036. PJ04-W2 will develop concepts, tools and procedures to increase the predictability and resilience of airport operations, improving the punctuality of flights in a safe and environmentally sustainable manner. The aim will be to improve airport/network integration for large and medium/regional airports, improve airport airside/landside integration, reduce the impact of MET aspects on airport operations, make further investigations about how environmental aspects could be monitored and managed in day-to-day airport operations. This will be achieved through increasing the coordination between Airport and the Network, validating the concept of regional connected airports. On the airport side, the project will have a focus on the airport hypervision concept, and how airport operations could be better predicted with anticipated impact, managed in a pro-active way and synchronised in various situations. This includes the development of performance and role-based dashboards as well as what-if, prediction and impact assessment tools. Here data-driven airport operations management and digital technologies are required enablers, as connected, data-based, intelligent toolboxes supporting all airport stakeholders must be developed. To ensure that full benefits are achieved and that the expected performance improvements are realised in the context of overall ATM Network, close coordination will take place with other projects, particularly those addressing network management, airport airside and runway throughput, enhanced arrivals and departures as well as the overall integration within the programme.